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The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

If you are to enjoy reading Wind in the Willows aloud with me, you must suspend your disbelief.

And if you are to enjoy having your star sign read by Tinker, you must suspend your disbelief.

Indeed, if you are to fall in love, you must suspend your disbelief.

Of course the key word is, "willing".

The work of children is play. And the purpose of play is to learn the difference between imagination and reality. In other words, the purpose of play is to learn how to suspend your disbelief, at will.

So that as an adult you can choose when to suspend your disbelief and when not to suspend your disbelief.

All of creativity and religion depends on us suspending our disbelief, at will.

Also choosing to suspend our disbelief in a safe environment is relaxing and refreshing.

And choosing to suspend our disbelief in a safe environment relaxes and refreshes us, readying us for our next foray into reality.

I believe that anything that takes spiritual needs seriously is a good thing. It does not need to be explained for the effect to be real for an individual, although it wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that a ritual of this kind has positive (and measurable) epigenetic effects.

But Victor is correct: you must suspend the cynicism that feels to natural to the Western mindset, and that's nearly impossible for some to do, for various reasons.

I know a woman with borderline personality disorder. I wonder if a shaman could effect some positive change in her. Her personality really does seem like it's been taken over; call it PTSD, call it BPD, call it loss of spirit; it's all the product of deep psychic trauma, and that is a central focus of shamanism as I understand it.

i was impressed by this youtube video below
... i mean the shaman woman who does a healing session. its Hi-ah Park.

i can relate to anything that involves 'dancing' like she does it ('ecstasy'), because i know a kind of energy/intuition from my own experiences with taketina. a sort of process-intelligence that can not be put into words or images, but it's coherent and meaningful and apparently trans-personal - and somehow related to the body or chakras, beyond what we experience as "head". i am rather oblivious to other sorts of spirit healing like dreaming of poweranimals and stuff. or fooling around with dead animals, chicken bones etc ...

Reading and Writing; Playing and Dancing.

But Victor is correct: you must suspend the cynicism that feels to natural to the Western mindset, and that's nearly impossible for some to do, for various reasons.

Yes, moving from the willing suspension of disbelief to reality, moving from imagination to reality, is a natural rhythm.

And just as imagination is the antidote to reality, reality is the antidote to the imagination.

And always remember the golden rule that the toxicity lies in the dose, or moderation in all things, even imagination and reality.

However to be able to move rhythmically between imagination and reality requires that first we learn the distinction between imagination and reality. And we learn this distinction in play as children, just as we learn to move rhythmically.

But as soon as we have learnt to play and dance, we are sent to a special institution, called 'school', to learn to read and write.

Unfortunately reading and writing is unnatural and we unlearn how to naturally play and dance.

And this is where we call in the shaman or the therapist to help us remember how to play and dance once again. Yes, the shaman or therapist will help us remember the distinction between imagination and reality, but most of all the shaman or therapist will get us moving rhythmically once again.

And then we will have the best of both worlds - we will be able to read and write and play and dance.

i was impressed by this youtube video below
... i mean the shaman woman who does a healing session. its Hi-ah Park.

i can relate to anything that involves 'dancing' like she does it ('ecstasy'), because i know a kind of energy/intuition from my own experiences with taketina. a sort of process-intelligence that can not be put into words or images, but it's coherent and meaningful and apparently trans-personal - and somehow related to the body or chakras, beyond what we experience as "head". i am rather oblivious to other sorts of spirit healing like dreaming of poweranimals and stuff. or fooling around with dead animals, chicken bones etc ...

i was impressed by this youtube video below
... i mean the shaman woman who does a healing session. its Hi-ah Park.

i can relate to anything that involves 'dancing' like she does it ('ecstasy'), because i know a kind of energy/intuition from my own experiences with taketina. a sort of process-intelligence that can not be put into words or images, but it's coherent and meaningful and apparently trans-personal - and somehow related to the body or chakras, beyond what we experience as "head". i am rather oblivious to other sorts of spirit healing like dreaming of poweranimals and stuff. or fooling around with dead animals, chicken bones etc ...

it shows a couple of things.... (like how a lot of indigenous shaman are fundamentalist bums)

Ty for the contribution, it also shows how some shamans are still limited by the ego and the operating systems of their primitive cultures. Hopefully they learned something from this woman or the experience with her. I'm sure they can't argue with the results.

Kinda makes sense. A child, person or animal deprived of attention will welcome any form of attention, even if it is negative and will even seek it out. The only time ignoring someone doesn't work is when their behavior does not find its reward in your attention.

This then makes me wonder about cursing, hexing, and generally sending bad energy in someones way. It tends to be self-destructive (as you fill yourself with that rage and negativity to do so), as well as supposedly harmful for the person you're sending it to. Ignoring wouldn't hold those risks, and is potentially, in some cases, more efffective, it would appear.

*ponders*

Yup you're right. But I can see that it's not in your best interest to do those things.

So that as an adult you can choose when to suspend your disbelief and when not to suspend your disbelief.

All of creativity and religion depends on us suspending our disbelief, at will.

Also choosing to suspend our disbelief in a safe environment is relaxing and refreshing.

And choosing to suspend our disbelief in a safe environment relaxes and refreshes us, readying us for our next foray into reality.

Ah Victor, you write as if they are conflicting aspects.

It is possible to be both rational and creative. There is no need to compromise one for the other, or to turn one aspect away. One can relax, love, imagine, daydream, feel a connection to the world, and then explain it, and understand it, and reject that which cannot be. All at the time same.